Flowers for Number Six
by pensivity
Summary: The girl with the Butterfly tattoo has a small admirer. Even though she's vermin, number six is thoughtful and kind. She deserves oh so much better than Neville can provide.


Flowers for Number Six

by Pensivity

Robert Neville watched with baited breath as the vampire girl opened her eyes for the first time. "She's alive, she's alive!" he wanted to say. "It's working! The cure is working," he wanted to intone. But her eyes flashed fire and her fingers were closed around his throat. Somehow the words would just not come.

It had been a pretty long day at the office. Robert Neville sat back in his chair, then kicked and lifted his feet to see how many times around the thing would spin. His thoughts were on Gloria, the girl strapped to the table downstairs. Somehow he would cure her. Someday. She was different from all the rest. She had a little butterfly tattoo. The chair spun lazily for three revolutions and he thought about butterflies.

"Robert Neville, day number six hundred sixty five. The rats are all doing well. I put them in their separate cages so they couldn't breathe on each other too much. I hid them behind a big curtain so if anyone comes down there and tries to see what I've got they'll get the surprise of their lives. It should be worth a good palpitation at least."

The next morning he arose and went for a jog with the dog, all the while thinking about Gloria. "What do you think she would like better for her coming back to life celebration, Sam? I'm thinking something in red, but she may prefer a sensuous black or maybe yellow?" The dog just rolled her eyes at him and said nothing. Good old Sam.

A year later he was still working on the cure. "This time I've got it," he told the girl when her eyes were finally open. This time she didn't try to strangle him. He had been careful to make the wrist cuffs stronger. Gloria hissed and spit in his eye. _Next time,_ he thought as he rushed to the eyewash station, _next time I'll wear some goggles and get it right_.

Gloria finally came around in circa day 900 or so. She opened her eyes, smiled at him for the first time and said her first intelligible words, "Good morning doctor, if you let me out I promise to be nice." Of course he believed her. Of course he showed her the entire house and where he kept the guns and valuables. Of course she stole his keys and drove off with his GT first time his back was turned. Right back out there into the fast life again. Old habits, he supposed gloomily.

He spent the next hundred some odd days trying to find and recapture Gloria, but she was slippery as she was wily. He went through a lot of vampire snares, caught a lot of her kind. But every time he got the bag home and strapped down, and peeled back the headpiece, it was just some other vampire. So he gave each one of them the cure in their turn and they promptly tried to bite his face off and then died.

The rats weren't doing much better. They were a testy bunch. All except number six. Number six was something special. Hang in there, number six. He tapped on the glass but the rat just looked at him and turned away. It was missing Gloria, too. "I'll find her," he promised.

That day was different. He stole a new GT from the showroom floor over on 11th Avenue. He hunted with the dog and couldn't run down a single kill. Broke a few windows driving golf balls off the floating Intrepid museum, and then spotted a lone buck grazing among the autos on 14th. He chased it with the dog until he found himself suddenly in a building filled with vampires. Jackpot. Even while fleeing for his life he was already planning his next snare.

Bingo. Back at home he pulled off the bag and there was Gloria, spitting mad and ready for another round. He readied the syringe while she watched. "You don't give me that shot, you hear me? You don't freaking give me that shot!" But all he heard was "Skreeech, hisssss, screachhhh!"

Steady girl. A tiny little thing like this never hurt no body. He hoped she didn't happen to look up at all the photos he'd taken recently of his latest victims. Showcases of sacrifice, and they were all for her, every last mug on the wall. He'd perfected the serum just for her. And for number six. Six was going to be a star. Gloria was going to be cured. He stepped back and watched her tentatively.

"Heart rate decreasing. Temperature falling. In the normal ranges. This looks promising. I think we might have something here." He was speaking into the microphone, recording everything on camera. Gloria's eyes came open and flashed lightning. Her teeth snapped together a mere centimeter from his nose. Oh if only those chains weren't there. But they were. She collapsed and died on the table for the hundredth time. He sighed and gave her a shot of adrenaline and watched her revampirize.

Number six was sitting up, smiling at him, asking for a date. "I promise, I pretty promise to be nice. Just let me out of the cage and I'll be the perfect pet you always wanted."

"I've heard that one before."

He and Samantha went out for a drive the next morning for his birthday. They saw Fred.

They saw Fred!

Neville had a thing for mannequins. But this time Fred was up to no good. Neville laid it all out for him. The doll got a good dressing down and some lead to boot. Neville turned to leave and wound up hanging by his toes, caught in his own snare! Oh how could he have been so foolish, and now what would Gloria say?

Back at the lab, Number six watched sadly as Neville strangled his dog, tufts of fur flying in the fray. _Now I'll be the perfect pet. Now you'll love me more._ But love was not to be.

Anna showed up, the witch. Only good thing was Ethan snuck down and petted her, but it wasn't the same as Neville. Ethan couldn't talk and that wasn't any fun. Anna was up there right now, stealing her Neville away. Oh if only Ethan would go over there and awaken Gloria. But he didn't. He was having too much fun teasing the other rats.

There was a lot of commotion from time to time upstairs. Then a bunch of things happened. Next thing she knew the lab was filled with wild, screeching mad vampires, all wanting a piece of her Neville. In the end, it was the firebomb that took everyone out. Number six suffocated in the fumes and slowly expired.

Ethan insisted on a Christian burial for the pair of them. Somehow he made Anna understand, pantomiming a shovel and the act of digging. There wasn't much time, but she and Gloria each got a little sod thrown on top of them and a few hurried words in prayer.

Ethan placed a bouquet of wild flowers on the dead rat's head stone which read, "Number six. She was always a pretty nice rat." RIP, number six.


End file.
